Designed by Daniel Romualdez, the New York headquarters of the pioneering luxury fashion site channel the spirited style of founder Lauren Santo Domingo

In today’s rush to embrace e-mail, e-tail, and a total life of e’s, we sometimes discover, surprisingly enough, that the rituals of contemporary life have more than a little in common with the old-fashioned ways of doing things. Take e-mail, which, modern and immediate (and, often, highly informal) as it is, also harks back to the days before telephones, when people corresponded by letter.

Or take Lauren Santo Domingo’s fast-growing online women’s fashion vendor Moda Operandi, which seems as digitally up-to-the-minute as it gets. The strategy is simple: The New York–based firm procures and photographs designers’ entire collections right off the runway, making available for purchase pieces that retail buyers might not order and delivering them to clients at the same time that stores accept their own shipments. [Condé Nast, Architectural Digest’s parent company, is a strategic investor in the operation.]

“There is so much more fashion coverage online, so women today are really seeing the collections,” notes Santo Domingo, while leading a tour of Moda Operandi’s headquarters. “They’re a lot savvier and more aware of the discrepancies between what they see on the runway and what they end up seeing in their local shops.”

Based on recommendations from its forward-looking buyers and the interest indicated by preorders, Moda Operandi stocks certain pieces in its e-commerce boutique. In addition to shopping on the company’s site, customers can make an appointment to visit its chic downtown Manhattan offices, where a staff stylist will help choose things that are literally ready-to-wear.

Yet for all its high-tech bravura, Moda Operandi also recalls a more genteel era, when ladies went to fashion shows and dropped by the designers’ salons afterward to pick out the clothes they wanted for the coming season—as opposed to heading to a department store and hoping their favorite pieces would be in stock.

“It sounds so novel, but it is actually a very traditional way of shopping,” says Santo Domingo, a tall, slender blond who worked for Carolina Herrera and Vogue before striking out on her own and launching Moda Operandi in 2011 with cofounder Áslaug Magnúsdóttir (who recently left the firm). “That’s part of the reason that our business is sort of a throwback. The idea of a trunk show isn’t new—all we really did was put it online.”

The duality between the old-fashioned and the modern comes to life in the design of the company offices. Santo Domingo worked on the project with architect and interior designer Daniel Romualdez, who is known for his facility with both classic and contemporary styles. Silk-shaded lanterns hang from the raw industrial ductwork. In the reception area and conference room, midcentury furnishings mingle with Louis XVI–style chairs. Santo Domingo’s personal office features a circa-1960 Henredon waterfall console placed on a graphic pink-and-purple carpet.

The cherry atop the Moda Operandi confection is the private fitting-room suite, painted with trompe l’oeil boiserie to resemble a 17th-century French salon. “We were always planning on having a dressing room for special alterations,” says Santo Domingo. “But we’ve been surprised by how many of our customers actually want that kind of exclusive treatment and tailoring.”

It goes to show that no matter how much people yearn for the next big thing, the good old modus operandi of personal service—conducted face-to-face—hasn’t worn out its welcome quite yet.